


The Reveal

by uaigneach



Series: We Weren’t Meant to be Heroes [14]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Knows, Akuma Possession, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng, F/M, Identity Reveal, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Knows, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13903110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaigneach/pseuds/uaigneach
Summary: Moving forward from the last ficThere's an akuma and it effectively closes off all other escape routes and Marinette and Adrien are forced to make a decision. Something that impacts every relationship they hold dear.





	The Reveal

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [this post](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/383307) by slouchingtowardsbedlam-deactiva (I think). 



> I read this one over but there's probably some things that slipped past both me and spell check.

After all the things that had happened this year, Adrien and Marinette really should have known that something like this would happen. They’d been pushing their luck for a while, and it was a miracle that they’d made it this long.

More and more of their Chat Noir and Ladybug personalities had been peaking through their civilian lives, and they knew that that was suspicious. Too many coincidences had occurred for their class to ignore now. Especially the Gym Class Incident™ and the Cafeteria Incident™. There really was no properly explaining that.

Couple’s gymnastics was a really weak excuse.

Like… really weak.

 

Still, walking (more like crashing) into their classroom only to find their entire class having some sort of meeting – with Alya holding her laptop with the Ladyblog on screen – was unsettling. No one had said anything to them in the moments before the teacher walked in.

 

However, the important thing to remark here, was that the teacher that walked in was not Ms. Bustier or any of their other teacher. No, it was a substitute, and a particularly stern looking one too.

You see, Collège Françoise Dupont was known in the teaching world to have bright but unique (read: challenging) students. They had never done well with dealing with substitute teachers. They always had the meek pushovers who were not prepared to handle kids like them, let alone the targets on their backs from akumas. They were run from the school rather quickly. It was almost a competition at this pint.

This substitute looked seasoned. She was older, maybe in her sixties, and looked like she would love to beat them with a ruler if they were to disobey. This of course, only made them want to act out more. There’s been a lot of stress lately, and with no outlet for the normal citizens, tormenting the substitute was how they wanted to go. They all sat up in their seats, each person (including Marinette and Adrien) shot looks at each other and silently agreed that they would go all out.

The woman of only 4’10” scouted as she marched up to the board and wrote in a very loopy cursive; “Mrs. Coil.” She turned to face them. “Salut class. Your teacher fell ill unexpectedly, and I will be taking over for the next few days.” Her voice was just as unpleasant as expected. It grated on your nerves like someone dragging a Lego down a computer screen. She pulled out a sheet of paper and began to read off of it. “The instructions left by your teacher read as follows; you will be doing math review for the next two hours – I will write the questions on the board. After that you may begin working on your final English essay. If you finish early, you may work on an assignment of your choosing.

She made eye contact with everyone as she scowled, her stern features twisting in displeasure. “Ms. Bustier doesn’t want us to move ahead with material. Now my rules are simple; no talking and no going on any kind of technology during class. Am I clear?”

Nobody moved and that seemed to be good enough for her because she turned around and began writing aggressively across the board in chalk. The class slowly but surely pulled out their notebooks and began copying down the question numbers. It was quite long and would easily take the entire first hour. Marinette suspected that the teacher was adding more questions just out of spite. She made eye contact with Alya.

Well two could play that game.

 

Marinette quietly raised her hand and waited for the teacher to notice her. It took a slide 5 minutes, but Marinette was patient.

She sneezed delicately, wrinkling her nose as she waited. That certainly caught the substitute teacher’s attention because the old bat’s head shot up and she practically snarled, “no inappropriate noises!”

What.

Marinette raised an eyebrow before glancing up at her still raised hand. The substitute teacher made a ‘get on with it’ kind of gesture. “May I borrow a calculator? Mine broke and you don’t want us to use our phones...” She asked, her gaze falling on the box of calculators that sat on the teacher’s desk. Ms. Bustier had learned after that one trigonometry test that they all bombed because no one had a calculator.

Mrs. Coil smirked at her before saying in a falsely sweet vice. “Well if you want to borrow one you need to loan me something of yours.” Okay, that was doable.

“I have a folder you can hold on to?” she offered as Alya moved to pipe up.

“I need to borrow one too! I have a highlighter.” The substitute didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t stop them from grabbing a calculator either. Things were quiet for another few moments, but then Adrien decided to join in on the fun.

“I have a shoe.” And then he held up his single shoe with a shit eating grin before toddling up to the front and dumping the runner on the desk and trading it for a calculator. Mrs. Coil just sort of stared at him in horror and disgust for a moment but didn’t say anything. This prompted everyone else in the class to follow Adrien’s example, and by the time that the bin of calculators was empty, there was a sizeable pile of shoes and other nick-nacks. The teacher looks even more sour than before. It was glorious.

 

They might have lasted another half an hour before the next disruption occurred. Some kid from the back of the class that didn’t usually make many waves, stood up and loudly announced that he needed to use the washroom. That didn’t go over well.

For some unknown reason, Mrs. Coil simply refused to let him go. Maybe it was his lack of respect, maybe because she was a bitch. Either way, the kid was not having it and he just shrugged before walking out of the room. Moving faster than they would have thought possible, the substitute locked the door with a sneer. “We’ll let the principal deal with him.” She huffed, grumbling as she moved to sit down.

But that kid – who’d they’d later learn was called Niles – wasn’t done yet. He camped outside of the class and whenever Mrs. Coil looked away, he’d make faces through the window, causing the people in the first two rows to giggle hysterically.

The substitute teacher became more and more irritate with every quiet wave of giggles. They pushed onward.

 

“Mrs? I need to use the washroom too. It’s an emergency.” Another girl pleads. But Mrs. Coil had mercy for no one and refused to let her leave, standing in front of the door Niles had left out of. The girl shot a panicked look around the room before darting out the second door at the back of the room along with 2 other nobodies. The door shut behind them with a click.

By now, Mrs. Coil was fuming. But she hadn’t broken yet. Usually, they didn’t have to go much farther than this, but Mrs. Coil apparently had balls of steel. She just needed another little push.

The final nobody of the class then chose to make his own daring attempt to make his name known to the popular kids. He stood up, staring defiantly right in Mrs. Coil’s eyes. “I need to use the washroom. It’s an emergency.” It didn’t sound like a request. It sounded more like a warning.

“No! You may not go to the washroom!” Mrs. Coil practically screamed, going red in the face.

This new kid was not one to be deterred, and he was determined. There was a glint in his eyes as he clenched his fists and stared down at the old crone. “It’s an emergency.” He said one last time, seemingly trying to give her a way out. Needless to say, she didn’t take it.

 

Then… the kid pissed his pants right then and there.

 

This time the teacher actually shrieked in pure frustration. The kid grinned and booked it out the back door. No one dared move as Mrs. Coil turned bright with the fury of a thousand suns.

“That’s it!” she wailed, slamming her hands on the desk that was closest to her (it happened to be Marinette’s). “I can’t take it any more! Jesus! I can’t handle it!”

 

And then, from the very back of the room, there’s a whisper of, “that’s what she said,” and that was it.

 

None of them even had the chance to see the customary black butterfly before the teacher had shifted into an akuma. For some unknown reason, Hawkmoth had chosen to give her some sort of corrosive powers (was it rust? Oxidization?) because she immediately found a way to seal the doors and windows shut. Her next order of business was turning on the students.

She did this by grabbing Marinette by the neck and holding her hostage. “Now dearies… nobody moves… or little miss Dupain-Cheng _gets it_.” She said sweetly, her eyes glowing a bright yellow as she looked at all of them.

Alya’s eyes widened in absolute terror at her best friend’s situation. In that moment, she forgot all about the possibility of Marinette being Ladybug and instead went straight to panic mode. Her best friend might get killed!

Marinette on the other hand, just looked irritated. Well her face was twisted into a poor imitation of fear, but her eyes just screamed ‘I’m so done with all of this’. Sure, there was the edge of fear at being in a situation like this, but it was carefully hidden and heavily overshadowed.

Adrien stood up, holding his hands up in an attempt to calm down. “No one’s trying to provoke you. Just let Marinette go, okay?” he said calmly. Mrs. Coil was having none of it.

“No! I’ll hold her hostage until Ladybug and Chat Noir get here. With a hostage, they’re sure to hand over the miraculous’ then!” she grinned, reaching forward with her free hand and shooting _something_ at the desks that the students were subtly trying to hide behind. The desks immediately began to rust rapidly, and soon there was no more desks.

Freaking fantastic.

 

Everybody that was still in the classroom immediately began to panic in their spots. They had nowhere to go, nothing to hide behind, Ladybug and Chat Noir hadn’t arrived yet, and the akuma had a pretty solid (if irrational) reason to attack them. They were royally screwed. Amazing.

Adrien looked considerably more antsy as he made eye contact with Marinette. He didn’t know what they were supposed to do now. He could try to fight the teacher off, but in his civilian form there was only so much that he could realistically do – especially against an akuma like this one. “Mari…” he whispered, silently asking her to make the call. He would follow her lead – whatever she decided to do.

Marinette frowned for a moment before getting a determined look in her eyes. In a flash, she’d elbowed the woman in the side and twisted in her grip. That split second of surprise allowed Marinette to drop and then scramble away to Adrien’s side. As soon as she’s out of the way, Adrien threw his chair at the teacher She shrieked, looking even angrier.

“You insufferable rats! Absolutely awful children! How dare you throw a chair at me!” she shrieked, the hair beginning to fly out of what used to be a perfect military bun.

“Marinette, we don’t have many options here.” Adrien whispered, no longer taking his eyes off the volatile hostile.

“Yeah.” She agreed, her own eyes flickering around the room.

Surprisingly, it was Chloe who broke into their conversation. “Screw it! I don’t care if I’m wrong at this pint. Marinette, Adrien, we know something’s up with you guys. Do whatever you have to do, we can deal with the consequences later!” she hissed, ignoring the slightly panicked look that everyone else was shooting at her.

That was close enough for Marinette. It was problematic that Chloe (and apparently everyone else) had noticed that something was off with them – and it was even more concerning that she seemed to believe that they could stop the akuma. But they didn’t have much of a choice now. They needed to act now.

“Alright.” She said before getting into a fighting stance. “Let’s take care of this! Spots on!” and then she was transforming into Ladybug and moving to fight the enraged akuma. Both she and Adrien ignored the shocked gasps of shock at the reveal as he too joined in with the fight. After the akuma was no longer a problem, was when they could talk about what everyone had suspected. For now…

“Claws out!”

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Coil had been taken to the hospital due to stress, and as such, they were all given the rest of the day off to ‘deal with the trauma of being attacked by their teacher – a trusted adult’. None of them ended up leaving though. They all sat on the floor with Marinette and Adrien sitting awkwardly at the front.

“So now you know. I assume that it goes without saying that this information cannot leave this room. Mrs. Coil doesn’t remember, but I know none of you can forget.” Marinette said seriously her stoic and serious expression shocking everyone. She didn’t even look at Alya with any kind of warmth. Her face and voice were cold and untrusting of everyone. She was backed into a corner, and now – for the first time – she felt dangerous. No amount of friendship will save them if they make the wrong choices.

Ladybug had been a paragon of good, while Chat Noir was the bad luck and other side. Now they realized that she could be darker. They’d seen it more and more ever since the reporter was killed. She was still friendly with the citizens, but there was a distance that hadn’t been there before. Marinette was usually so open, but in the wake of her biggest secret being revealed, she had closed herself off.

Like it was her and Adrien against all of them.

 

Everyone nodded. “We won’t tell anyone.” Nino agreed. Even Chloe looked cowed as she shuffled awkwardly in her seat. That drew people’s attention to the oddly quiet girl.

“You were the first one to speak. What did you mean by you all ‘knew that something was wrong’ and that you don’t care if you were wrong?” Adrien said suddenly, his face surprisingly expressive and earnest as he stared up through his still messy bags at his childhood friend.

Chloe blushed, scowling as she avoided making eye contact with anyone. “Well you two have been acting weird. Everyone’s noticed – you can’t tell me you haven’t. You’ve been ding impossible things and acting differently.” She pointed out indignantly. Marinette’s gaze did not change as she stared at Chloe. Instead it shifted as Alya began to speak.

“Some of the things you’ve been saying sounded really weird to us, and that’s when Nino and I started looking closer.” Alya admitted. “I had the video footage of the obstacle course, and when I compared it to some patrol footage from the Ladyblog it looked the same. Uhh… then there were numerous incidents in the past couple months and your absences and excuses with akumas… the circumstantial evidence started adding up.” She felt kind of embarrassed at her conclusion jumping.

At the time everything had made sense. Her best friend had begun keeping secrets from her, and she was beginning to get a clearer idea on who Ladybug was! In that moment, she hadn’t even considered how this might make Marinette feel. She had been determined to figure out this mystery for years, and suddenly the fact that she might be betraying her friend didn’t matter anymore. She’d gone straight to people that she wasn’t even friends with!

That was kind of a dick move.

It wasn’t a good excuse, but she’d just… jumped the gun. Part of it had been that deep down she knew that if she was confronted by just her, neither Marinette nor Adrien would be honest with her. It was stupid to go to the class, but it turns out they’d suspected anyways.

This was far from the ideal situation, but they were here now. “The others had seen the same things as us. Today just… confirmed things.” Marinette frowned heavily before turning to her partner.

“I told you she’d figure it out eventually.” She grumbled moving to tuck herself under Adrien’s chin. It didn’t really look like much of a comfort thing – but more like a protective one. She was covering his front and throat, much like wolves did.

It made sense, with how protective she was of the sunshine child.

 

“We have been a little less careful lately. Besides we’ve changed a lot since we first started.” Adrien said, patting Marinette’s shoulder. He then turned to look at Alya. “Yes, but the fact still remains that we must not discuss this elsewhere. If Hawkmoth catches wind of our identities, everyone we love can be put in danger! That being said… I’m sure you have questions.”

Well that was a quick 180. Marinette shot him a stern look, but she didn’t speak against her partner’s words.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Nathaniel asks suddenly, drawing everyone’s gazes to himself. “I mean, you were heroes.”

Adrien smiled patiently, “like I said before, if we told anyone, Hawkmoth might find out who we are and then he can use our family against us and Hawkmoth will get what he wants.” Adrien’s open answer encouraged other people to begin asking questions as well.

“Who is Hawkmoth, and what does he want?” Nino asked, his face twisting into one confusion.

This time it was Marinette who answered. “Hawkmoth is the person responsible for creating akumas. He does that because he wants to steal our miraculous’ – what allows us to use our powers we don’t know why he want them, but we do know he’ll stop at nothing to get them.”

“He has been getting more vicious with the akuma’s powers lately. People dying as collateral isn’t exactly new anymore.” Adrien pointed out. “Maybe there’s time limit.”

They all took a moment to digest this. “While that’s a concerning fact, what I want to know is how you could do that obstacle course. I know you couldn’t do that 2 years ago – and you said you have… powers?” Juleka asked, leaning forwards in interest.

At her remark, Marinette broke her composed facade by blushing a bright red and buried her face in her hands. Adrien just full on laughed, his posture relaxing significantly until he looked as uncomfortable as he normally did. “Well I’ve always been athletic but Mari here, she struggled with walking out of the suit.” He cackled. Marinette smacked his shoulder.

“What? It’s true!’ he argued, still grinning widely. He turned back to look at Juleka. “When we discovered each other’s identities, I made sure to work us until we didn’t need the suites help to perform all of our stunts or fight. If our miraculous’ are taken, then we need to be able to fight, and if we get attacked by normal citizens, we can’t exactly just transform.”

Kim broke in before Adrien could continue to explain his training methods. “Wait, what do you mean discovered each other’s identities? Didn’t you already know?” This time it was Adrien that turned firetruck red.

“No, we were told that we had to keep it a secret, but eventually Mari found me out and that was that.” He admitted in embarrassment. Marinette giggled softly.

“Do your parents know?”

Adrien looked down at the floor semi-guiltily. “No. If my father knew… well it’s safe to say I wouldn’t be living in France anymore, let alone going to a public school.”

“My parents figured it out a couple months ago. Adrien spend a lot of time with us, and they caught us patching each other a couple times as well as recognized our behaviour too.” Marinette added.

That’s when Alya – who had been suspiciously silent this entire time – spoke up. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered. “Don’t you trust me?”

Marinette’s face immediately twisted into a sad expression as she reached out as if to touch her best friend’s shoulder. “You have to understand Alya, I was given a responsibility. This is bigger than me and you – and I couldn’t afford to have you be involved and hurt because of me. You running the Ladyblog was bad enough already.” Alya just looked away, not seeing the hurt her rejection caused being reflected into Marinette’s eyes.

 

No one really wanted to speak after that awkward silence. That is until Chloe stood up and dusted herself off. ‘Well today has certainly been tedious. I need to get home before my dad starts wondering where I am. Come on Sabrina.” Then she was stalking off towards the door. Just before leaving she turned back. “Oh, and just to be clear, if any of you compromise my darling Adrikins or his… partner, I will help them ruin you.” And then she sniffed as if that was too much sentiment and left with Sabrina at her heels.

**Author's Note:**

> hmm where's it going to go next... I've set things up so that I can have a fic where Alya and Marinette talk it out, but I don't quite know where I want to go next past that. I was toying with a plotline but with recent events... I don't know if it would be appropriate anymore. It's just... my school's been talking about it a lot. Anyways... how did we all feel about the slight Chloe redemption??? Maybe I should like... go down an avenue involving her into the series more? I refuse to do anything with new miraculous wielders though.


End file.
